


Delightful

by Who Shot AR (akerwis)



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: F/M, Fluffy, Future Fic, old people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-31
Updated: 2009-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:16:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/pseuds/Who%20Shot%20AR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weekly traditions, years into the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delightful

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't end the way I'd like it to, but I've officially given up on trying to make it do what I want. ^_-

Ruthie Rutherford (aged forty-three years, ten months, and three days, though she didn't know it past the year) had been a server of suppers at the Diner's Delight Delightful Diner and Cafe for approximately fifteen of those years. She enjoyed it: the regular customers, the out-of-towners on a break from the road, even the high schoolers that plagued the place after school got out for the day. There was always _something_ happening with the customers, and sometimes, just sometimes, there was the hint of a mystery right under her nose.

For instance, each Saturday, around five in the afternoon, a couple came to eat an early supper. This in itself was not particularly notable, as the Diner's Delight Delightful Diner and Cafe was popular among the early-bird set, but what _was_ notable was the fact that only half of the couple qualified for a senior discount. The man was somewhat stooped, but had clearly towered head and shoulders above the general population in his prime, and dressed as though he had just come from a funeral. Always accompanying him was a woman who couldn't have yet been thirty (which couldn't have been even _half_ the age of her companion), a whirl of brightly-coloured dresses and cardigans and light brown hair that tumbled around her shoulders.

Ruthie could not be certain that they were a couple, of course; she had thought at first that the old man was lucky enough to have an especially devoted granddaughter, which was more than she could say for herself. The way that the two looked at each other, however, the way they spoke, and the tenderness with which she set a gloved hand on the dark sleeve of his suit jacket suggested a far less platonic existence.

In short, she had decided, _somebody_ was somebody _else's_ sugar daddy.

They fascinated her, despite her suspicion that she was watching a shameless gold digger and/or a shameless old lech in action. Each weekend, the same tradition: they entered the diner, usually ended up sitting in one of the high-backed booths next to the windows, and watched the pedestrians outside as they ate. His hands shook sometimes, but she smiled at him as sweetly as if he were her high school sweetheart.

They were almost, Ruthie thought, like an old married couple, aside from the part where that didn't make sense at all when she considered who they were. It was an old man and his trophy wife (or girlfriend, she supposed), and yet they seemed to have a bond stronger than the Berkowitzes--and they'd just celebrated their fiftieth anniversary.

They never kissed, which Ruthie thought was odd, since it seemed like if an old man was going to _have_ a trophy wife (or girlfriend), they'd be more physically affectionate. And they never ordered dessert.

"Can I get you anything else?" Ruthie asked one late July afternoon, piling their empty plates onto her serving tray. "Some ice cream, a slice of pie?"

"Oh, we're fine," the young woman replied, flashing a brilliant smile. "We've got some pie waiting at home for us. But thank you."


End file.
